


All Who Wander

by suitesamba



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, M/M, magical au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 19:50:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severus, a self-exiled British wizard, lives a solitary life on the American plains, studying the magic of the land. Harry, a reluctant newlywed traveling west, is found by Severus, half-dead and miles from his party. The two have much more in common than it would appear, and embark on a quest together to bring Harry home – wherever that may be.  </p>
<p>This story was written for the 2013 Snape_Potter Snarry-a-Thon on LJ/IJ/DW.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Who Wander

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N** : Thank you to Abrae, who cheered me through this story, and helped me with all manner of things. This story is inspired by _Brokeback Mountain_ , though if it resembles the story/movie at all, it is, I hope, in atmosphere and mood. I tried for a sense of sparseness and quiet, giving two men all the room in the world to be who they were meant to be. No character death here, ladies and gents.
> 
>  
> 
> **Disclaimer: Not mine, never was, never will be. No profit is being made from this amateur work.**

  
** All Who Wander **

_“Not all those who wander are lost”_ ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

 

They were fools.

Young fools, but fools nonetheless.

Easterners. Hemmed in by too many people and dreaming of land. Imagining the free tracts of land offered by the government would be like their backyard gardens in Philadelphia.

He’d been in this land of plenty for nearly twenty years now. He’d seen a war start and end, the slaves freed, the president assassinated. He’d seen wagons and trains and more wagons and more trains. There was plenty of room for everyone, and he had claimed a small plot of it for himself, then roamed the deserts and plains and the mountains, harvesting ingredients, brewing his remedies, visiting the outlying towns and trading posts. 

In mid-spring, this year like every year, he’d gone into Kansas City to restock the magical supplies he couldn’t obtain from his native friends or this fertile country. Rare finds that they cared nothing about. They could supply him with a king’s ransom of bezoars, but shrugged when he asked about dragon blood. Or wartcap powder. Mandrake clippings. Unicorn dung.

He’d sent two owls back to England, each in response to letters waiting for him when he arrived. One to his mother. She had stopped him at the door as he left that last day, had taken his face in her hands and gazed at it, at all its sadness and imperfections. Somehow, somehow she had known he wasn’t coming back. 

_“Write to me, Severus. At least let me know you are alive.”_

The second letter went to his mentor, with whom he shared more details of his life. Albus had visited once, ten years ago, and was thinking of coming again.

In Kansas City, he’d picked up the other supplies he needed, then loaded up his saddlebags and headed west out of town only a day after he’d arrived. He never stayed long. There was too much commotion here, too much noise. He didn’t like people, and they didn’t like him. Not with his hard face and long hair. Not with the way he moved, stealthy, cautious, over-aware of his surroundings. Not with the black hat pulled low over his dark eyes. 

Severus made no apologies for his appearance. 

He crossed into Kansas and headed southwest. He planned to resupply in Dodge City, skirting Wichita to the north. He’d have to cross the Neosho and the Arkansas, but neither would present a problem to a lone traveler on a good horse.

The Arkansas was high when he reached it, so he headed downstream to cross at the wagon ford. Salazar, accustomed to crossing wilder rivers than this, carried him over easily. He dismounted when he was clear and tightened up his bags, noting without interest that there was a buzz of activity along the riverbank. Leaning against the horse, his back to the wagons that had pulled up out of the river before him, he watched the activity along the bank, aware, as well, of the commotion behind him. He could hear crying – wailing. So, someone had gone into the river. Probably a child. He didn’t have to turn around to know that the inconsolable weeping came from a young woman. 

There was nothing he could do. The river was unforgiving. The child was lost and would likely never be found. He’d come upon drowned animals often enough downriver from crossings such as this one, and once, the remains of a hapless settler, washed up miles below the ford. He was not uncaring, nor unfeeling, but simply pragmatic. The land was intrinsically wild. The river would continue to claim her victims.

As he mounted his horse, he glanced at the group of women gathered around the grieving mother. She was, indeed, young. Not much older than twenty, he surmised. Red-headed, athletically built. She could be a survivor, he knew, in the Dakotas or wherever this group was headed. 

He was not at all curious about their final destination.

And he set off, without further thought to the tragedy.

But he did alter his course, deciding to follow the more lightly traveled trail that roughly paralleled the river while the wagons, he knew, would continue west on the wide, worn and rutted trail.

He loved this country. The product of an ill-suited marriage between his witch mother and Muggle father in industrial Manchester, his childhood had been bleak until he’d left for boarding school in Scotland. He had remained in England only four years following school, leaving for the New World on a passenger ship with a single rucksack, his wand and enough money to get him passage from New York to St. Louis. He was bound to apprentice with the son of a chieftain of a western tribe, studying the medicinal plants and herbs they used in their own species of magic. When his mentor had proposed this unusual course of study, he would have been willing to board the boat that very day.

Nothing was keeping him in England.

 _No one_ was keeping him in England.

Not anymore. 

He rode alone for several hours, stopping only when the sun was beginning to set. He unpacked, then unsaddled Salazar and left him to graze. He set off to the river for water, walking along a game trail that led through the bramble to the water’s edge.

The river was wider here, but still high and fast. He bent to fill his skins, then dipped his hands in and splashed water on his face. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye—a blue heron—and lifted his head to watch it pluck a fish up and swallow it whole.

His eyes locked onto something on a narrow sandbar a dozen feet out from the bank. He squinted, then slowly stood, staring at what was unmistakably a body.

Mere seconds later, with a soft crack, he was standing on the sandbar. The man at his feet could not have been dead long. His clothes were still wet, the telltale smell of decay missing.

He was startled beyond measure when the dead man groaned. Severus dropped to his knees and gently turned him over.

He was young, no more than twenty-five at best, compactly built. He had black hair. He looked out of place, not worn enough for the country they were in. He was breathing shallowly through his nose, his face a mass of bruises and cuts. His right arm was awkwardly splayed at an impossible angle. 

Without a second thought, Severus had his wand in his hand and cast a sleeping charm on the man. He gathered him up, mindful of the broken arm, and Apparated back to the clearing off the trail where he’d left his supplies.

The ground was dry, and he didn’t bother putting the canvas down beneath the stranger. He removed his boots first, noting that they were too tight. Scuffed but not worn otherwise. He methodically stripped off the trousers and the sodden socks, then used his wand instead of his knife to cut off both shirt and jacket so as not to disturb the broken arm any further. He followed with a warming charm, then dug into his pack for his Muggle supplies.

He saved the broken arm for last, cleaning and bandaging the cuts on the leg first. The stranger’s trousers had been torn around a deep gash in his thigh. He could do little for the ribs that he knew were cracked and bruised, save use up his last bit of Skele-gro, and the facial contusions could only be cleaned and disinfected. He placed an ever-cold charm on a wet towel and laid it on the swollen bump on the forehead.

He ultimately used magic to set the arm, as both bones were broken, but splinted and bound it so that it could heal on its own, if the man pulled through his shock and survived the night.

He unrolled his pack and laid out his bedroll, then levitated the man over onto the roll and knelt down beside him again, one of his precious Pepperup potions at the ready. The potion was effective on Muggles, even without the dramatic, ear-steaming effects it had on wizards. He planned to heal the man as best he could, then leave him with the first group of travelers he came upon, or, if things got rough, Apparate with him to one of the trading posts or forts that dotted the outlands.

But first, the Pepperup.

The man looked better already, though his breathing was still labored. He had some color back, thanks to the warming charm. With the broken arm resting on the man’s middle, it took little effort for Severus to raise his back, arm around his shoulders, and hook a finger in his mouth so he could dribble the potion in and let it trickle down his throat. He had to massage the throat once or twice, but the potion seemed to be hitting the mark.

Severus nearly dropped the man when steam began billowing from his ears.

As it was, he pulled the nearly empty vial away and laid the man quickly back down as he jumped to his feet, wand out and ready. How could this man, injured, near dead, be a _wizard_? A wizard, even a mediocre wizard, would not find himself near death in a river, cold and bleeding. 

The man drew in a long breath and let it out. As Severus watched, his chest began to rise and fall more evenly. He stared, half fascinated, as the young wizard’s face seemed to twitch, as if awareness was beginning to awaken in him. Severus kept his wand trained on the man as his eyes slowly opened. They didn’t focus, and didn’t track over to Severus. Instead, he stared upward then slowly rolled his head to the side and retched. 

Severus dropped down beside him and quickly banished the mess. And for the first time, he spoke.

“You are causing me a great deal of inconvenience, young man,” he said, his voice rough with disuse. He unfolded a wool blanket and draped it over the man, tucking it around him. The warming charm was still at work, but the weighty comfort of the blanket seemed to calm the shivers that had started in the man. “I need to know your name, and where to take you, and perhaps why you turned up in a river, half drowned.” He rifled through his pack again, this time extracting a pain potion. Once again he raised the man’s head up to drip the potion down his throat.

The potion worked immediately, and the young man’s face relaxed. Severus rolled up his spare shirt and placed it under the man’s head, then hurried back to the river to fetch the skins of water he’d left there. When he returned, he made fast work of building a fire, for the evening was setting in. He had the tent up in five minutes, not bothering with his usual show of driving in the stakes and stretching the canvas over the rope frame manually. 

His guest, as he had begun to call him in his mind, was sleeping. Severus ran his hand over the man’s forehead. It was sweaty and feverish. He could deal with the fever – the ingredients he needed for a simple fever-reducing potion were plentiful near a river, and he would only need to steep them in purified river water. He made another trek out for the willow bark, then put the concoction together and set it in the coals at the edge of the fire.

He was already exhausted. But he looked now at the sleeping stranger and set to work levitating him into the tent, then came out and began searching through his clothing.

He found a small hunting knife, a comb, some silver coins, a broken pair of spectacles – which he handily repaired—and a folded letter. The letter was addressed to “Mr. Harry Potter” and signed “Your loving mother-in-law, Molly.” It was dated two months prior. He read it without reservation. The letter welcomed young Harry to the family and asked him to take good care of his new wife on their journey into the west.

Could this man be the one who had gone into the river just before he’d crossed it? Was the red-headed woman mourning a husband instead of a child? It seemed unlikely that a man could have survived in the river so long – he had pulled him out many, many miles – an entire day’s journey on horseback – from where he would have gone in. 

And, if he were a wizard – where was his wand? 

There was nothing on him, nothing at all, to suggest he was magical. Nothing in his pockets, or on his person, or in the letter. No wand seam sewn into the hem of his sleeve or the side of his trouser pocket.

But Pepperup Potion did not cause steam to pour from the ears of Muggles.

Severus filled a metal cup with the brew from the fire and set it on the ground. He then circled the tent, putting up the wards he used every night. Finally, he picked up the tin cup and slipped inside.

It was a wizard’s tent, though not an elaborate one. It had a single large room and a kitchen nook, with no better amenities than most settlers’ cabins. But it was warm, and there was a thick featherbed with pillows, and a comfortable chair, and two oil lamps hanging from the ceiling to read by in the darkness. 

He lit the lamps with a quiet _Lumos_ and knelt by the young man. He propped him up and carefully began to spoon the fever brew into the man’s mouth. He found himself staring at the face as he coaxed the man to swallow. Beneath the swelling and bruising were pleasant features, with skin not yet hardened by long exposure to sun and wind. He studied the man’s hand, noting the broken fingernails and the blisters, evidence of work along the trail. But missing were the calluses of daily life on the prairie, or farming and caring for livestock. This man was heading west and had certainly seen his share of work along the road, but he wasn’t accustomed to outdoor life.

This made no sense. Why would a wizard be pushing himself through such hardships? Had he married an unknowing Muggle? Was he hiding his identity from his wife and her family? Had he been ostracized from Wizarding society, such as it was in this country?

And where was his wand? Lost in the river, most likely, but there wasn’t a single hidden seam in the discarded clothing, and wizards were nearly as careful with their wands as they were with their children. Wands were hard to come by. Not everyone had the skill to make them, or the money to buy them.

He finished spoon-feeding the injured man the potion, then set the cup aside and draped another coarse wool blanket over him, tucking it in around thin shoulders and hips. He would know by morning if the man would survive. He’d decide then what to do with him. He knew one thing – he’d find a place for him soon. Severus Snape traveled only one way – alone.

The fatigue of the long day and the unexpected trouble was setting in. Severus stripped off and went outside to take care of necessary business before settling onto the featherbed. He was glad he didn’t have to sleep on his camp bedroll often. He turned on his side, facing away from the stranger. But he lay there a long while, listening to the rhythmic breathing behind him. He was unused to human company, but the quiet companionship of those gentle exhalations, lonely and forlorn, carried him into dreamless sleep.

Severus slept, undisturbed, until dawn.

~*~

He woke to the absence of the sound that had lulled him to sleep.

It took him only a moment to get his bearings, staring at the side of the canvas tent. The sun was not up yet, but the darkness had begun to lift. He could hear the river, and birds chirping into the new morning, and the breeze rustling the willows. But he could not hear the even breaths of the injured man behind him. He turned over slowly, prepared.

And was met with the unexpected gaze of a pair of green eyes, bright with fever.

“Good. You are awake.” Severus spoke softly, but the man recoiled nonetheless. He pushed back the covers and reached for his trousers. 

The man stared. His lips parted, then closed again. His head rolled back toward the center until he was staring at the top of the tent.

“Where am I?” His voice was weak.

“I pulled you from the river yesterday evening. I suspect you we are quite a distance downriver from where you went in.” Severus was kneeling beside him now, placing a cool hand on the warm forehead. “Are you in pain?” He adjusted the man’s bound arm, settling it more securely across his middle.

“Arm hurts,” he replied weakly. “Hurts to breathe.” 

Severus reached for his rucksack and dug out another pain potion. He popped off the cork. “Drink this. It’s a pain potion – not as fresh as I’d like, but it will do the trick.”

“Potion?” The man pushed the vial away with a weak hand. “What do you mean?”

Severus furrowed his eyebrows. “I assure you it is safe,” he said, puzzled that a wizard would not recognize a standard pain potion. “I brewed it myself.”

The man closed his eyes and made a motion as if to shake his head, grimacing at the movement. Severus held the vial to his lips and trickled it in without his leave. The effect was almost instantaneous. The tension seemed to bleed out of the bruised face as Severus settled him back down.

“You need more fever brew as well,” Severus said. “I’ll heat it.”

The kitchen was nothing more than a small alcove with a wizarding stove, a small cold box, a storage cabinet and a drop-leaf table for two with a single chair. Severus lit the stove with his wand and placed the metal cup with the leftover fever brew on the cooking surface. He set the kettle on beside it and glanced back over at his patient. The man had turned his head to the side and was watching him cautiously. 

“You can’t have a stove in a tent,” he protested weakly when he saw that Severus was looking at him. “You’ll burn us up.”

Severus frowned. He wondered if the man had hit his head. He was most decidedly thinking like a Muggle. “The stove is perfectly safe,” he said. “The venting spell is in place.” He turned to stir the fever brew.

“Spell?”

Severus turned around quickly. “A wizarding spell,” he said, enunciating each word carefully. “Magic.”

“Magic?” The man looked around the tent, then seemed to shrink back in fear. “Who…who are you?”

Severus inhaled deeply and slowly released the breath. This man…this wizard…could it really be possible that he didn’t _know_ he was a wizard? That he was totally ignorant of the magical world?

Could he be wrong? Could a Muggle possibly react as this man had to the Pepperup? Would he have to Obliviate him?

No. Impossible. The man was a wizard. An American wizard. While the American wizarding schools were not as old, established and distinguished as Hogwarts, they did exist and did serve the wizarding public in much the same way that Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang did in Europe. Muggle-born wizards were identified at birth and introduced to magic by the United States Department of Magic. 

Severus picked up the warmed brew and carried it over, kneeling again at Harry’s side. 

“My name is Snape. Severus Snape. What is yours?”

“Snape,” he echoed, testing the name. “Harry Potter,” he said, watching Severus, his expression guarded.

Severus indicated the tin cup. “This will help bring down your fever, Mr. Potter.” He held it while Harry sipped it reluctantly. He continued speaking in a low voice while Harry sipped at the bitter brew. “You should sleep. We will talk again when you are more rested.”

The man closed his eyes without protest, magic forgotten for the moment, and sank back into slumber. Severus set the cup aside and folded his legs to sit cross-legged beside him.

He was certain this man was a wizard. He was responding too well to the potions, healing too quickly to be a Muggle. The very fact that he had not drowned was nearly proof enough in itself. But Severus was equally convinced now that the man was untrained. That he did not know what he was, or that a magical world existed just beyond his reach.

The rational thing to do, Severus thought, sitting there on the floor of his modest wizarding tent staring at the unexpected intrusion in his life, was to _Obliviate_ the man and return him to his people. The logical course of action was to continue on as he had been going, alone, independent, free and unfettered. So what if this stranger was a wizard? His story meant nothing to Severus Snape. _He_ meant nothing to Severus Snape. He was a burden and an inconvenience. Had Severus not seen him there, on the sand bank, he would be in halfway to Indian Territory already. 

Severus Snape had never been one to believe in fate. But if the man had he not had magic within him, he would certainly be dead. And if anyone but a wizard had found him….

He watched the man sleep a while longer, then knelt again to examine the broken arm and the other injuries. Finally, he rested his hand on the man’s forehead and swept the sweaty hair back from his eyes. 

The man sighed at his touch but did not open his eyes.

 _Pity,_ thought Severus. _They were such beautiful eyes._

He stood and went back to the stove, poured boiling water over his tea leaves and sat quietly at the table, savoring the brew. He tried to put the memory of those eyes, of the quiet sigh, out of his mind.

He would gather what he needed for some semblance of Skele-gro. He would cure the man, make him well enough to ride with him, and return him to his grieving wife.

And he would pass off the potions and the magic as Indian remedies, sacred earth magic.

But as he scavenged for prairie chicken eggs and picked through the sun-bleached bones of a long-dead bison, gathering the best ingredients he could substitute for dragon’s eggshell, he thought about what his own life might have been like without magic. He imagined himself twenty years earlier, a young man still. Had he not known he was a wizard, would he have wanted to know? Was magic worth turning everything one knew upside down? Was it ever too late to learn to see life from a new dimension?

He dropped the bones beside the tent and fished the eggs from his pocket, placing them carefully in the grass. He looked southwest, raising his gaze to an ominous grey sky. A storm was brewing. A bad one, if he read the signs correctly, and he usually did.

He sighed, gathered the eggs again, and stepped inside the tent.

~*~

The Skele-gro was simmering and the scrambled eggs were waiting, charmed to stay warm, when the man awoke again.

The storm was beginning to move in. Worried about the darkening sky, Severus had gone out to tend the horse. He had long experience with storms on the prairie, and this one had all the signs of a severe one. He secured the tent magically and strengthened the protection wards. He added an Impervius charm to the canvas itself, and warded the ground around the tent to repel running water. 

When Harry woke, Severus insisted that he stand – despite the returning pain. He devised a sling for the arm, then wrapped his arms around his chest from behind and hoisted him upright. Harry leaned heavily against him, barely able to make it a few paces from the tent to relieve himself. He was naked save for a blanket around his shoulders, but seemed too weak to protest the loss of clothes. Severus practically carried him back inside, then lowered him onto the furs and blankets. He was shivering, so Severus pulled a quilt from his own bedding and wrapped it around his guest.

Fever reducer. Pain potion. Tea and eggs.

He had to hold the mug for him, but the man drank willingly. The eggs he ate without protest, quickly giving up his initial effort to hold the fork himself.

“I am brewing something for you,” said Severus. “An Indian remedy – to help your arm and ribs heal quickly. And there is a bad storm coming in. We will be staying indoors today.”

The young man nodded. If he recalled anything of their previous conversations, he did not say. He didn’t ask how he came to be where he was, nor did he mention wizards or magic or spells or potions. He fell asleep again, leaving Severus to clean up the dishes and watch the Skele-gro simmer.

It was the thunder that woke him.

It was ominous. Deep, rumbling, all around them. The wind howled, but the tent, dark save the light from a pair of candles on the stove and the eerie flashes of lightning, seemed as tight and secure as a log cabin.

“Gin?”

Severus, seated in the reading chair with one of the newspapers he’d picked up in the city, jerked his head toward Harry. Gin? He couldn’t possibly….

“Ginny?” The voice rose a fraction, and the man’s good arm reached out to pat the ground beside him. Realization dawned. He sighed. “Oh.” 

“You are here with me,” Severus said in a measured, if not reassuring, voice. “You were injured in the river.”

Harry was silent for a moment. He rubbed his eyes with his good hand. 

“I’m sorry. I remember now.”

“You do not need to apologize.” Severus stood and picked up a cup of water from the table. “Who is Ginny?” he asked as he knelt beside the pallet and offered the water to Harry. He kept hold of the cup, even as Harry held on to it with one shaky hand. 

Harry drank before he answered.

“My wife,” he said at last, with what sounded, to Severus, like resignation, but could not be. A heavy drop of water ran down his jaw from his lips. 

“She was traveling with you?” asked Severus. The red-haired woman being consoled while the others searched the river bank came to mind, but he did not mention her.

“Yes.” Harry grimaced as Severus settled him back down on his bed of blankets and skins. He shifted, and Severus carefully repositioned his arm. He was down to only three pain potions and decided to save them until the need for one was greater. Perhaps for the ride back to find his party.

“We’ve been married two months.”

Something was off. The man’s voice lacked emotion. He didn’t express concern over his bride, or a desire to return to her, or offer anything else. Pride, love, joy, fear…all were absent. Severus thought they should not be, not even given the man’s physical condition, the trauma he had suffered. A man married two months, a man headed west in a wagon with his bride to forge a new life, a man given up for dead by his party and miraculously alive, should not speak so _complacently_ about the mourning widow continuing west without him.

“Then we shall get you well quickly and reunite you with your bride,” said Severus. He had set the cup against the canvas wall and now extracted a medicinal paste from the rucksack. It wasn’t magical, not exactly, but it was better than anything available at a Muggle establishment and would ease the man’s sore muscles without the sedating effect of the pain potion. 

The lightning flashed again, followed immediately by a long roll of thunder. The ground trembled beneath them. 

Severus began to work the unguent into the man’s shoulders. His patient seemed to tense, but for only a moment, then let out a long breath and a sigh.

“This isn’t right,” said Harry.

Severus’ hands froze. Harry did not have the bronzed skin and the taut muscles of the natives that he often treated, but his shoulders were strong and his skin soft and Severus had forgotten himself, had been enjoying the feel of them beneath his fingers. 

“I am simply applying a medicinal paste,” he said evenly. “I assure you….”

The man let out what could only be a strangled bark of laughter.

“The tent,” he said, a strange, barely-there smile on his bruised face. Another flash of lightning lit the interior, the crash of thunder shaking the ground but somehow, not the walls. “It shouldn’t hold up in this storm.”

The rain started just then, not with a gentle drizzle either. Severus resumed rubbing the paste in, moving down to the man’s chest. He watched his fingers, not meeting the man’s eyes. His chest was nearly hairless, the outline of ribs apparent in this too-thin body. Severus worked carefully over the ribcage, pressing only hard enough to apply the paste.

“I’ve learned some tricks from my Indian friends,” he said at last. “They often live in conditions like these. We will be safe here, and dry.”

“Indian friends?” The man frowned, obviously grappling with the idea that an Indian could be a friend. 

“I have many friends among the original inhabitants of this land,” said Severus as his hand moved to a hip. The man shifted and turned his head to the side, biting his bottom lip. “This hurts you?”

He jerked his head in a nod. “You’re not an original inhabitant either, are you? Your voice…you’re English?”

Severus nodded. “Once, yes. I was.” He prodded gently at Harry’s hip. “Bend your knee—slowly. Try to slide your heel along the floor.”

Harry did as instructed, though with difficulty, and Severus determined that the joint was secure and not dislocated. He reached across the man’s middle for the other hip, glancing as he did at his bare midsection, wondering if he was uncomfortable lying there naked with a stranger touching him so intimately.

The torrential rain turned to battering hail.

They heard it hit, though the roof of the tent did not bend downward with the force of it. It cracked and bounced, jittering across the ground outside. The horse whinnied. 

“Your horse!” The man’s voice rose, panicked.

Severus pressed the man’s shoulder down. “Salazar will be fine. He is sheltered.”

“I didn’t see any shelter….”

“Trust me.” Severus was massaging the salve into the man’s thighs, feeling them tense beneath his fingers. Harry closed his eyes and let out a long breath. He spread his legs, just slightly, and the tension seemed to ease. Severus rubbed the ointment in longer than necessary, hands tracing the contours of newly forming muscles within. He finished, reluctantly drawing his hands away and wiping them on a rag. The man’s eyes remained closed, his head tipped back, his breathing relaxed. “Do you think you can sit upright so I can treat your back? You cannot lie on your stomach with your arm as it is.”

Harry opened his eyes. Severus helped him sit, then slid in behind him, supporting the man with his knees, clasping him on either side of his torso. He rubbed the medicine into his upper back, then moved his hands to spread it lower. He did not wonder at his own body’s physical reaction at touching a man, this man. He had always preferred men to women, and this man with his green eyes and dark hair and mysterious circumstances appealed to him, and intrigued him. This married man, he reminded himself. This wizard who wasn’t a wizard.

Harry shuddered as the tips of Severus’ fingers worked over his lower back and grazed his crease. Aware of the impropriety of it, Severus pulled his hands away without comment and scooted back, easing Harry carefully back onto the floor. Severus moved his arm back into position and covered him, then stood and went to the kitchen to decant the Skele-gro. 

“The candles aren’t flickering.” Harry was watching him, eyes still wide open.

“There is no wind,” he answered.

“I know there’s not. That’s it, see? There _should_ be. Listen to it. It sounds like a gale.”

“The tent is well-protected.” He offered no other explanation. “Tell me about your family. Your parents. Your siblings.” Severus did not look at Harry as he worked.

There was a long, poignant silence. “My parents died when I was a baby. I was raised by my aunt and uncle. They have a son – my cousin.”

His voice was flat. He spoke of them much as he had spoken of his wife. Neutrally, without emotion.

“You are close to them?” He turned, having measured a dose of potion into the all-purpose tin cup, and looked at the man.

“No. My aunt is my mother’s sister. They weren’t…close. My aunt and uncle hated my father. I never heard them say a kind word about either of my parents. They are not…nice…people.”

Severus knelt beside Harry again, stared at him, the pieces of this odd puzzle falling into place. Harry’s parents had died, taking knowledge of his magical inheritance with them to the grave. Or leaving it with guardians who had chosen to keep it from him.

“Why did they dislike your parents?” he asked. He settled his lanky frame into his customary position, cross-legged, and rested the cup in the vee of his groin.

Harry blew out a breath through his nose. He seemed reluctant to speak. “They called him a freak. Unnatural. A drunk. I think he was some sort of gypsy, or traveler. Certainly not good enough for my mother, though they never had a kind word about her either.”

Severus leaned forward.

“Mr. Potter – think carefully.” The lightning flashed again, illuminating the young man’s brilliant green eyes. “Have you ever done anything...” he paused, considering his words. He instinctively lowered his voice. “Anything _impossible_?” 

_Like surviving in that river._

The man turned his head away from Severus. He stared at the candles on the stove.

“I was hoping it wasn’t me,” he whispered. “It’s not…natural.”

Severus followed his gaze to the steady, unflickering candles.

“No, it is not natural for some people. Most people.” He answered carefully. “Though it is completely natural for others. I suspect your world has been kept _unnaturally_ ordinary.”

Harry turned his head away. “I don’t like to talk about it,” he said flatly. 

“No, I suppose you don’t,” answered Severus. “But as I seem to have you at my mercy, humor me. I am keeping this tent secure in gale force winds. What impossible thing have you done? You see this, what I am doing with this tent in this storm. I do not believe you are afraid.”

“You’re doing this intentionally,” Harry responded, waving his good hand feebly to indicate the tent around them. He looked at Severus earnestly. “I never mean to do anything…it just happens.”

Severus nodded. He held Harry’s gaze. “Go on.”

Harry glanced at the candle again. He turned his eyes slowly toward Severus.

“I…doors open for me. Latched doors.”

Severus narrowed his eyes, misunderstanding.

“So I could get out,” explained Harry, voice breaking slightly.

“Out,” repeated Severus. “You were…confined? Against your will?”

“My uncle didn’t trust me,” said Harry dully.

“What else?” Severus’ dark gaze held Harry’s. 

“My aunt didn’t like me getting dirty.” Harry broke his gaze and tipped his head back, first staring at the ceiling, then closing his eyes. “When I was a child, I didn’t stay dirty. I’d be clean by the time I got back home.”

Self-protection. Classic accidental magic in children. Severus spoke softly. “You are not unnatural. What you are describing happens in children frequently – children with these special…abilities.” 

Harry opened his eyes and turned to look at Severus again. “I’d like to believe you,” he said slowly. “But I’m not sure I can.”

“Your wife.” Severus changed the direction of the conversation again. He chose his words carefully. “Tell me about her. She must believe you are dead by now.”

He watched Harry carefully. The man bit his bottom lip and stared at the ceiling. 

“She’s from a big family,” he said at last. “They’ll take care of her. Two of her brothers were traveling with us.”

“Seeing you again will be a shock to her – and all the worse as time passes. I can travel very quickly – impossibly quickly, you might say. I can get you back to her tomorrow or the next day.” Harry tensed as Severus made the generous offer.

“I can’t travel like this.”

Severus fixed him with a stare. “I thought I was clear. I can return you to your party tomorrow or the next day, once you drink this mixture and let it work for twenty four hours.” He held up the cup. “It will help your bones knit quickly.”

Harry looked away.

“Unless…unless you do not wish to return?” Severus’ voice was nearly lost in the howling wind.

“I can’t go back to Ohio,” answered Harry. “I don’t want to.”

“I mean to return you to your traveling party,” said Severus. “If you know their planned destination, I can find them with little effort. I have been traveling these parts for many years. I know the wagon routes.” He waited a moment, but Harry did not reply.

“Unless you don’t wish to return to them?” repeated Severus in a quiet voice.

The young man eyed the tin cup. “Will it hurt?” he asked.

“What? The potion?” Severus did not miss that Harry had not answered his question. “Yes. A great deal. However, most people believe a day’s pain is well worth not being incapacitated for six or eight weeks.”

Harry considered, then nodded.

“All right, then.” The hail had changed back to driving rain. He held out his hand for the potion.

Severus helped him steady the cup. He knew the taste was horrible, but encouraged Harry to drink every drop, offering him water only when he had consumed the entire potion.

“Two days,” he said as he stood, cups in hand. “You have two days to decide whether you are going back to your wife or to the nearest trading post. Those are your options. Your choices are your own. I do not care which you choose.”

The young man nodded. Severus thought he seemed relieved.

~*~

He had a hard night.

The storm gradually moved past them, and Severus went out to tend to the horse and remove the spells that kept him in place and protected from the elements. Harry had been sleeping fitfully for several hours, but awoke when he came back in, brow sweaty, groaning against the pain of the bone-mending. He wanted to go outside to relieve himself, but Severus brought him the chamber pot instead, not wanting to risk a fall while he was under the potion’s effects. 

“What time is it?” he asked as Severus once again got him settled onto his bedroll.

“Past midnight,” Severus answered. 

“Can I have something for the pain?” His voice was tentative. Severus knew he had not wanted to ask.

“Unfortunately, the pain potion will not help. Not with the pain of mending bones.” 

“Whiskey, then?”

Severus smiled wryly, but shook his head. “Not with the potion. I am sorry.”

They both dozed for the next few hours, but Severus woke again as Harry cried out. He had rolled to the side, trapping his injured arm beneath him. Severus quickly freed it. 

“Should it hurt everywhere?” asked Harry, grimacing as he stretched out his right leg.

“No. It should not. It is a selective remedy, targeting injured or compromised portions of the skeleton.” He watched as Harry flexed his uninjured wrist, understanding. “You have old injuries,” he said. “Possibly poorly healed.” He stood and moved to his own bed, removing his wand from where he had tucked it under the pillow earlier in the evening. “Heat will help the pain,” he said. While Harry watched him, eyes wide in the almost-dark of a single candle, he cast a strong warming charm on a wool blanket, then tucked it against Harry’s skin, piling the other blankets on top of it.

“That stick…what is it?” asked Harry a few minutes later. He had sighed as the warm blanket settled on his skin and seemed marginally better already.

“It is my wand,” answered Severus, tucking it back under his pillow. “A wizard is never without his wand.”

“Wizard.” Harry tried the word out on his lips. His eyes grew wider still. “A wielder of magic. Arthur’s Merlin. You’re a _wizard._ ”

“Indeed.” He settled back on his bed, rolling on his side to face his guest. “But you are missing something obvious. _We_ are wizards, Mr. Potter, you as much as I, despite your lack of experience and training.”

“I’m a wizard.” He was still testing the words. “I’m a wizard,” he said again.

Then he laughed.

Severus could not help but smile. The sound was unexpected, filling the quiet tent from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. It was an honest laugh, natural. Harry Potter was transformed in the space of an instant.

“Mr. Snape, tell me about magic,” Harry said.

And Severus did.

He found that he could talk about magic from morning to night. From sunset to sunrise. He breathed it. He lived it. It was his constant companion on his lonely road. It was not something he used, but something he was. He had never had this opportunity before, to introduce magic to a wizard kept in the dark. 

Severus was a quiet man. Cautious and reserved. Sharp-eyed, sharp-witted, sharp-tongued. His edges were hard. He was efficient, not gentle. Subdued, not taciturn. Sarcastic, not witty. He seldom smiled, rarely laughed. The things that brought joy to his life did so in a quiet way, affecting him with their beauty, or their strength, or their grandeur. 

He lived alone, but he was not lonely.

Magic was his companion. It tied him to the world, yet kept him separate from it. He could walk in shadows, skirting the edges, observing the movement of people and animals and clouds and stars, then melt back into his refuge. He touched the edges, outlined the action. 

He had a rapt pupil in Harry Potter. He was a prophet to the young man, delivering a surprising but welcome sermon. The words Severus Snape spoke filled in the cracks in his life, formed the missing pieces, cemented the fragments together.

Hours later, as dawn was breaking, and Harry had heard about potions and jinxes and the magical creatures who lived in the Great Forest and swam beneath the lake, Severus handed his wand to Harry.

“Point it at the candle,” he said, voice hoarse with use. He could not remember the last time he had spoken so long at a single stretch. “Say the word ‘Nox’, and think about the candle snuffing itself out.”

Harry took the wand reverently, sliding his fingers over its length. He held it naturally, pointed to the candle. He glanced once at Severus, then looked at the candle and whispered “Nox.”

The candle snuffed out. Harry dropped the wand with an exclamation of surprise.

“I’m a wizard,” he said. He picked up the wand and examined it with wonder. “How do I get one of these?”

“You make it,” said Severus. “Now go to bed. You’ve kept me up talking all night.”

They slept.

~*~

“You can’t get rid of me yet,” Harry said. “Not until I make my wand. You owe me that at least.”

“I owe you nothing,” groused Severus. But it was an empty protest. In the space of two days, he had already grown accustomed to his new companion.

But two days _had_ passed, and he had asked Harry for his decision.

“The wand, at least,” insisted Harry. Severus had repaired his clothing, but he was wearing one of Severus’ shirts anyway. His round spectacles were perched on his nose, and he was drinking coffee out of a tin cup, holding it between his hands to warm the morning chill from them.

Severus turned sideways on the kitchen chair, staring at Harry. Harry was sitting cross-legged on his bed pad. He had finally had a good night’s sleep the night before and this morning was pleasant and communicative.

“I will consider it, but only if you answer a few questions – truthfully.”

Harry looked down into his coffee. “All right,” he said, considering the demand. “I suppose that’s fair.” 

Severus didn’t hesitate. “Tell me about your schooling,” he said.

“My schooling?” Harry was clearly surprised. He undoubtedly had expected a different question.

“Your schooling. Did you attend school? For how long? Can you read and write?”

“I went to school until I was fourteen – old enough to start work in the tavern. Yes, I can read and write. And do sums.”

“So you left school to work in a tavern?”

He nodded. “Uncle Vernon’s.”

“Ah. An upstanding establishment, then?”

Harry blushed. “I wouldn’t say that,” he muttered.

Severus let it go. “And your wife. How did you meet her?”

“I met her brothers at the tavern.”

His response was brief. Too brief.

“Go on, Mr. Potter. I have time for the full story.”

Harry let out a small huff. 

“Fred and George started coming in to the tavern several years ago. I got to know them – they were friendly.” He smiled. Clearly, the memory of his wife’s brothers did not upset him. “Jokesters, both of them. Always had something funny up their sleeves. Uncle Vernon hated them, but he loved their money. They always paid up their tab when they left for the evening.” He paused. “They’re identical twins, by the way. Really popular with the regulars.”

“So you met your wife through her brothers. They did not bring her to the tavern, I assume.”

“No, they wouldn’t. Never. The women that came in….” He trailed off and shook his head. “No. Not Ginny.” He stopped speaking again and pushed his messy hair away from his spectacles. “Fred and George had a brother who had already gone out west and gotten a claim. A great one, the way they talked. Plenty of hunting, great soil for crops and livestock, and close to a town. That was Bill. Another brother – Percy – went out with his wife to work at a bank in that town. Another brother – Charlie – got a job as a hired man on a ranch.” He smiled and held up six fingers. “There are six brothers, if you’re counting, and then Ginny at the end.”

Severus nodded. “I can keep track, Mr. Potter. Continue.”

“The plan was for everyone to settle in the same area. But Mr. and Mrs. Weasley – their parents, obviously….”

“Obviously,” repeated Severus. The edge of his mouth quirked up a fraction.

“Right.” Harry rolled his eyes and smiled. “Well, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley insisted that everyone have a solid plan and a means to support himself before setting out. And they wouldn’t allow Ginny to go at all without a husband.”

“Oh? That is where you come in, then?”

“No. Well, yes. But not right away.” He frowned. “This is complicated, Mr. Snape. Can I finish?”

“You may.” Snape settled back in his chair and tapped his fingers against the table.

“Fred and George decided to open a mercantile in town. They’re entrepreneurs of a sort, and they took the train out to see the town and talk to people who lived there. They were gone for a month, and when they came back, they started getting ready to go. They sent their younger brother to Kansas City to store up the supplies they’d need out there, and Fred joined him after a few weeks. It all seemed to be falling together when Ginny’s fiancé died.”

Severus’ eyes widened. “That is an unexpected twist in your tale,” he said.

Harry looked down. “It was a horrible accident – he was thrown from his horse and broke his neck. As George told it, she was devastated. I’m sure she loved Oliver, but now I know that she loved the idea of going west with her brothers just as much. She was inconsolable. She insisted she’d go anyway and her father put his foot down. He had the idea that if she went out west unmarried, she’d meet some lawless scoundrel.” Harry grinned. “I suppose he was thinking of someone like you, Mr. Snape.”

Severus narrowed his eyes and shook his head. He sipped his cooling coffee. “Go on. This is not the tale I expected.”

“No, it wouldn’t be, would it? I did say it was complicated, though.”

“You did,” agreed Severus. 

Harry looked down into his lap for several moments before continuing. “Right. Well, this part is hard for me, so bear with me, all right?”

Severus nodded. 

Harry took a deep breath and released it. “Well, George knew how things were for me there, at the tavern. With Uncle Vernon.” He seemed to steel himself. “I’m not looking for sympathy, Mr. Snape,” he explained. “I put this all behind me when I said yes to his crazy plan. And I don’t regret it.” 

Severus did not comment and sat through the next long pause, tapping one finger slowly on the tabletop. Counting out the seconds. Finally, Harry looked up. He had that false, passively neutral look on his face again, the one he had worn when Severus first spoke of returning him, when Harry first told him a bit about his home life.

“My uncle isn’t a nice man. He didn’t pay me to work at the tavern. They gave me a bed in the back and that’s about all. I kept my tips, when I got them. The tavern didn’t draw a wealthy crowd, and the tips were usually small. Uncle Vernon figured I owed him thirteen years of work for the thirteen years they kept me before I started to work.” He laughed. But the sound was harsh, and sad. “Well, I started to work there when I was nine or so, after school and on weekends. He didn’t count those years.” 

Harry fell quiet again, and Severus waited silently, anger welling within him for this young man he hardly knew. This young _wizard_ who had had the power within him to change his circumstances, but who had been kept completely in the dark, most certainly by this uncle who feared losing his free help.

“George thought I should marry Ginny and set out with them. He’d give me a job in the store, he said. Ginny was pretty and smart and funny as he told it.” He looked up. “And she was, really. All of those things.”

“And she agreed to this? To marry a stranger?” Severus kept his voice as even as possible, despite his misgivings about the entire arrangement. Was Harry Potter the worst kind of fool?

Harry nodded. “She wanted to meet me, of course. I didn’t have time for girls, and none of them would look twice at me besides. I worked in a tavern, and that was hardly respectable, and my clothes….” He trailed off again. “Fred and George outfitted me once we got to Kansas City.”

“So—you met her…?”

“Sorry. Right. George had already hatched the plan with her. Her parents didn’t know, of course. He bought me some decent clothes and concocted a story about me having lost my wife just as we were making plans to go West. Ginny knew the truth, of course. I met her at her home, in the parlor, with her parents. I suppose they liked me.” He smiled. “I liked them. Kind, decent, people. I did hit it off with Ginny, really. She was just so…so eager to leave. To go with Fred and George on the trail. She has this incredible sense of adventure….”

“So you married her.”

“Yes. I got up at four o’clock on a Sunday morning and left with everything I owned. We were married that afternoon and left on the train for Kansas City with George the next day. We met up with Fred and Ron – that’s their younger brother. We all stayed together in the rooms Ron and Fred had rented until we were ready to set out, then Ron went back to Ohio. He’s planning to come out next year with his parents.”

Severus was eying him keenly. “You speak more of the brothers than you do of your wife.”

Harry sighed. “We just assumed we’d work it out, you know? But I think she expected more of me. That I’d be more like her brothers. Certainly more like her fiancé that died.”

Severus waited, looking at Harry expectantly.

“More manly,” he said with a sigh. “More excited – to have her. More adventurous. Look – I lived my entire life inside a grimy tavern. I don’t know how to chop wood. I don’t know a thing about horses. I can’t make a fire or play stick ball. I can wash dishes and mop floors and clean up vomit. I’d never…never…” He trailed off, as he always did when the emotions roiled up too close to the surface.

“You’d never been with a woman,” Severus offered. 

“Yes.” Their eyes met.

“Did you like it?”

Harry blushed and looked away.

“Men speak of these things, do they not?” asked Severus. “I am quite sure you have heard worse at the tavern.”

Harry jerked his head in a nod. “And given that, I thought….” He blushed again. “It’s not important. We like each other well enough. We have a good time on the road. I’ve learned to handle the wagon well enough, and Ginny is so excited about everything. She’s not like the other women, really.”

“She has six older brothers,” offered Severus. “That will have affected her upbringing, her behavior. Even her outlook on life.”

“Right.” Harry sighed. He held his healed arm out, twisting it this way and that, then shook his head and looked back at his host. “Mr. Snape, without me, Ginny can go on, get settled with her brothers, and find someone that makes her happy.”

“Someone more manly?” Severus suggested.

Harry faltered. “Yes. More experienced.”

“You would gain experience,” noted Severus. “If you stayed with her.”

The two men stared at each other. Harry blushed and looked away.

“So you plan to remain dead – for her? To give her a chance at happiness with someone else? Someone more suitable to her tastes?” He was leading Harry. He imagined he knew what was at the root of all of this, but sexual preference was certainly not something virtual strangers discussed, no matter their unusual circumstances.

“It’s easy to convince myself of that,” answered Harry, his voice apologetic, “that she’s better off without me. As a means to an end, I served my purpose, I suppose. She’s on her way out west with her brothers, to start a new life.” He smiled, then, an honest smile that suited him well. “And I got something out of it as well. I’m not in Ohio, working in Uncle Vernon’s tavern, for one.” He looked around the tent. “And then there’s everything else.” He lowered his voice. “Magic.”

Severus stood, decision made.

“I cannot in good conscience help you make a wand without training you to use it. An untrained wizard with a wand is a hazard to himself and to the world at large.” He dropped into the reading chair and reached for his boots. “There is much to do, Mr. Potter, that cannot be done here, inside this tent. If you are to learn with me, you must travel with me. I do not stay in one place for long until the winter sets in. You will do as I ask, when I ask it. If at any time you wish to leave, I will take you directly to the nearest trading post and you will be on your own from there. This is understood?” 

“Yes. Thank you.” Harry stood up and extended his hand toward Severus. Severus reached out and grasped it, pleased that the grip on the injured hand was firm. “Understood.”

Severus pulled back his hand. “Get your boots on. You need wood for a wand, and a magical item for its core. Your first lesson will be to learn the trees and shrubs of the western plains.”

Harry grabbed his boots. “You don’t waste time, do you, Mr. Snape?”

“No, Mr. Potter. I do not.”

~*~

Severus Snape was a demanding teacher.

They didn’t start out until midday, and after that rode without stop until nearly sunset. Severus was making his way south and west, toward Indian Territory. They would encounter nearly every type of American wand wood along the way. 

He was not accustomed to having arms around his waist as he rode, nor a student behind him, shouting questions at him that he had to strain to hear over the pounding of Sal’s hooves. When they camped the first night, Harry could hardly move. Severus knew he had pushed the young man too hard that first day, given his recent injuries and his lack of experience in the wilds, but he had already lost three days on the road in caring for him.

“I do not erect the tent every night,” he said as he unpacked the horse while Harry sank gratefully onto the ground. He glanced at the sky to confirm what he already knew. “We will have good weather tonight, and stars. We will sleep beside the fire on the bedrolls.”

“I’ll sleep right here. I don’t need a bedroll,” Harry said, lying back on the rough grass. 

“You won’t be saying that when the sun goes down,” Severus said. He tossed Harry a water skin. “Fill this up.”

He had chosen a site along a large creek, close enough to the trail they’d been on but out of sight, tucked in a small grove of cottonwoods. They set up camp quickly, despite Harry’s soreness. Harry moved slowly, but helped with any task Severus set him. When the fire was built, and logs added to burn down to coals, Severus looked at the horizon. The sun was low in the sky, the shadows long.

“Follow me, Mr. Potter,” he said, setting out along a game trail close to the creek. He walked quickly, confidently picking out the trail. He didn’t look back to see if the other man was following him. 

That evening, Harry Potter cut two thin branches from each of a half dozen trees. He felt the bark, stepped back and observed the entire tree, noted its shape, whether it bent with the wind or resisted its pull. At their camp, he laid out six branches side by side on the earth beside the fire, then worked with the other six under Severus’ direction. He stripped each of its leaves. He cut them in half, peeled off their bark. Felt the wood. Smelled the wood. Tasted the wood. Tested its flexibility, its strength, its durability. He learned the names of each tree – its common name, its Latin name, its true name—or so Severus said—the name given it by the native peoples here. Severus quizzed him until he could flawlessly name each of the remaining branches. They ate potatoes stewed with the rabbit Severus had brought back while Harry worked with the wood, then fell asleep beneath the stars, wrapped in warm blankets, faces toward the fire, safe within Severus’ wards.

They stopped more often the second day, and the third. They studied more wood—cut from bushes and shrubs and trees. Severus had Harry hold the cut branches in his hand, wave them in the air, sleep with them beneath his pillow. They traveled a week like this, westward and south, Harry seated behind Severus on Sal, arms looped comfortably around him, Severus’ thighs pressed warm against his own. 

In the end, with two dozen branches before him, with fingers stained, nails broken, hands scratched by thorns, Harry Potter chose the Wild Plum.

Severus looked at him thoughtfully. 

“You are certain?”

Harry looked again at the branches spread out on the earth before him. He looked up at Severus, nodding.

“I think so.”

“Close your eyes.”

Harry obeyed. He obeyed his teacher instinctively now, intuitively understanding what was at stake.

Severus reached across and gathered up the sticks of wood. He spread them out again in random order.

“Keep your eyes closed and choose your wand.”

He watched carefully as Harry passed his hands over the branches, barely grazing them with his fingers. He found the Plum easily. With eyes still closed, he held it out to Severus.

“This one.”

Severus took it from him then stood.

“Come. Tonight we will sleep in the tent.” He walked over to the folded canvas where they had placed it with the other stores.

“Severus?”

Severus, bent now beside the tent, looked at Harry.

“My choice…the Plum. Will it suit me?” Harry’s eyes were earnest. Severus knew that he felt the importance of this, a decision that would leave him with a wand to channel his magic for the remainder of his life.

The Wild Plum was as close to this land as any tree they had studied: plentiful, versatile, fruitful. It bore abundantly, sour or sweet fruit depending on the variety of tree. The Cheyenne used the branches in their sun dance; the Navajo used its roots to make a dye. It was a thorny shrub, often used for wind-breaks around the farmsteads on the plains. In the spring, it was resplendent in thick, white blossoms. It was tenacious, sending up shoots from the roots, holding tight to shaky river banks, surviving in adverse conditions.

Much like Harry.

“It will suit you,” said Severus. “Come now, help me with the tent.”

Harry carefully picked up the scattered branches and bundled them together beside the fire. He pulled out the Plum and set it to the side, then stood and went to help Severus.

~*~

It took another week to find _the_ Wild Plum Tree.

In the end, Harry chose an old tree, gnarled and overgrown, clinging to a riverbank. Its blossoms were gone and the green starting to fill in from the unfurling leaves. He climbed it while Severus watched from the river where he had led Sal to drink. After only two weeks spent with Severus, he was becoming a natural on the Plains, comfortable on horseback and scaling trees with ease. He balanced on a sturdy branch, leaning against the trunk for support, while he cut the branch he had chosen. He dropped the knife to the ground then jumped down, sitting immediately in the grass beneath the tree to study the branch.

As Severus had instructed, he had cut the branch much longer and thicker than the wand would be. Harry would have to shape it himself, into the length and form that his magic dictated. 

“Is it the one?” he asked Harry some time later, after Sal had drunk his fill and he had led the horse back up the bank and set him to graze. 

He watched as Harry ran his hands over the bark. His hands were tan now. They had a delicate look, despite not being small hands, as if Harry was meant to play a musical instrument or mend fine jewelry. But he knew, from having those hands grip his waist these past days, that they were not weak, nor were they delicate. Sometimes he wondered what Harry felt as they galloped across the prairie, seated together on Sal’s back. If he felt the same stir of arousal Severus felt when Harry shifted his hands, moving from hips to waist, or when Harry leaned into him and tightened his hands around him when he grew tired. When his thighs, gripped tightly against Sal’s flanks, pressed forward against his own.

Harry looked up and let out a breath. He nodded.

Severus held out a hand and pulled him to his feet.

“Then we stay here. You will want to shape it where you found it. I will find a spot for the tent.”

~*~

Harry spent two weeks shaping the wand.

Severus never hurried him. He wandered during the day, hunting rabbits and squirrels, or catching fish for their dinner. He gathered ingredients, dried them, prepared them and stored them. He spent three days brewing. Sometimes, Harry would join him at their campsite, a five-minutes' walk from the Wild Plum Tree where he worked. He’d ladle out a bowlful of cold stew, and hold it out while Severus warmed it, at home already with the easy presence of magic around him. 

Sometimes Severus marveled at how comfortable Harry was with him, how easy their camaraderie. They could sit silently near the fire at night before retiring, seated on logs Severus had brought back and shaped, one or the other getting up from time to time to poke at the fire or add another log. Sometimes they would talk – Harry of the wand he was shaping, or the herons fishing in the stream; Severus of the herbs he had found in that day’s hunt, or the beaver dam three miles downstream, or the nausea remedy he was perfecting, to be sold at the trading posts.

When it was very late, always just before they would retire to the tent, Harry might bring up magic.

He was interested in the potions Severus made, in the curative remedies. He wanted to know if the ingredients melded together with magic, if someone without magic could make them. He asked if witches and wizards could fly, or stop a bullet, or lift something impossibly heavy. 

Severus might show him a spell, then. Something simple. A _Lumos_ , or an _Accio_ , or a simple transfiguration spell. He made Harry laugh by giving his tin cup legs and making it scoot away from him on the flat stones around the fire pit. 

He found that he liked making Harry laugh.

And when Harry asked Severus where he had gone to school, Severus told him about Hogwarts.

Harry laughed at the name, was incredulous when he realized Severus was not joking.

He listened raptly as Severus described the ancient castle, the moving staircases, the talking portraits, the Great Hall with its enchanted ceiling. 

“Why did you leave England?” asked Harry one night. The wand was nearly finished. He’d been sanding it the last two days, with a stone he’d fished from the river. He held it now, turning it this way and that, testing it with his eyes, feeling it with calloused fingers.

“An ill-advised love affair ended abruptly,” said Severus. He sorted through the logs, looking for the right one to add to the fire.

“Oh.” Harry didn’t ask him to explain. “That’s more or less why I’m here too, isn’t it?”

Severus placed the log on the fire. He thought of Regulus – Regulus who bowed to his family’s wishes for an heir – a legitimate heir – and married the Malfoy girl. He had not allowed thoughts of Regulus—frozen in time as a man in his twenties, never a husband, never a father, always in darkness and shadows, warm and strong and breathing heavily, wrapped in his arms—to surface in some time. He kept them buried, kept his focus on the present, on the wonders of this new world that never grew old. On the potions he had created and improved, on the new ingredients he found nearly every day.

“Mr. Snape?”

He had been poking at the fire with a sturdy stick. He looked up now into Harry’s curious green eyes.

“Yes, Mr. Potter. More or less.”

~*~

“In England, dragon heart string is extremely popular. As is hair from the mane of a unicorn.”

Harry’s eyes had widened. “Dragons? You’re serious?”

Severus nodded. “Yes, they do exist. There are dragon preserves across the European and Asian continents. And as I’ve already told you, unicorns can be found in most of the large forests, including the one at Hogwarts.”

“Will we have to travel there?” asked Harry. He sounded hopeful. 

“No.” Severus smiled wryly. “We have other choices here that are more suitable to an American wizard’s wand. A hair plucked from the mane of a wild stallion as it gallops. A tail feather from a Thunderbird.”

“In flight?” said Harry, grinning.

“Idiot. No. Any Thunderbird will do.”

“Of course.”

“You might try the freshly shed skin of a Horned Serpent.”

Harry grimaced. “No snakes. Wild stallion it is, then.”

They had packed up the tent and were standing near the creek while Sal drank. Harry glanced over at the old plum tree, at the worn spot beneath it where he had worked for nearly two weeks. “It was peaceful here. I’ll miss it.”

“You might. The next few days will hardly be peaceful.”

Harry picked up a stone and skipped it across the creek. They both watched as it skittered over the water, landing on the rocks on the opposite shore.

“How does one get a mane hair from a galloping wild stallion?” Harry asked, almost as an afterthought, as Severus took Sal’s harness and led him out of the creek.

“I will help you as my Indian friends helped me,” Severus said, rubbing a hand down over Sal’s neck. “It will not be easy.” He pulled himself up on the horse, but instead of settling in the saddle, he eased himself back into Harry’s spot, just behind the saddle on the coarse blanket. 

“What are you doing?” asked Harry.

“Teaching you to ride,” said Severus. He held a hand down to Harry. “I should not expect you to master a wild stallion if you cannot first learn to handle Salazar.”

As it turned out, Harry was a natural.

He might not have been as manly as his wife had wanted or expected. But he had a natural instinct for riding, leaning into the horse’s stride, guiding the great beast with the soft press of a knee or the light touch of his fingers against the side of his neck. Salazar responded to him so readily that Severus thought him a traitor. He sat on a rock outcropping near the creek they’d been roughly following, studying Harry’s shaped and sanded wand wood, as Harry rode the horse alone. 

Severus did not tire of watching Harry astride the horse. He preferred to ride bareback, leaving the saddle on the ground beside Severus as he took Salazar through his moves. Severus taught him to hoist himself up on the horse’s back without assistance, how to whisper quietly into his ear as he fed him one of the precious sugar cubes. How to calm the beast with his voice and movements. After this wild ride, Harry slid off the horse and wrapped his arms around the animal’s neck, leaning against him as he scratched his neck and withers, face buried in his mane. Watching him, Severus saw how well they melded together, and envied the horse, thinking of Harry’s arms around his neck, his face buried in his neck. Harry whispered to the beast, words Severus could not make out, then patted him firmly and walked over to Severus, pulling himself up on the rocky ledge to stretch out beside him, tipping off the hat Severus had given him to wear, and settling it on the rock beside him.

“God, I love to ride. It’s like flying.”

He smelled of horse and wind and grass and sweat. 

Severus raised an eyebrow. “Salazar is fast. But I would not call it flying.”

Except that he would. Harry sailed on Salazar’s back, elbows held back, head forward, brushing the flying mane. Salazar ran like the wind and Harry seemed to meld into his back so that, at full gallop, it was hard to tell where horse ended and man begun. 

Watching him, Severus thought Harry would be as gifted on a broom as he was on the horse. He had a certain athleticism, a particular grace, an agile strength that brought to mind a Quidditch Seeker. 

_Regulus_.

Harry’s hand rose and he pointed to a dark dot in the sky far above them.

“Eagle.”

And the sharp eye of the Seeker to go with it all.

Severus leaned back and they lay side by side on the rocks, watching the eagle sail and soar. 

It occurred to Severus, lying there beside Harry, relaxed and happy, that Harry was just beginning to live. That his life in the East had been a chore rather than a joy. That any pleasures in that life were stolen pleasures, squeezed in among odious work and restless sleep.

The eagle blinked out of sight. 

“I stink.” Harry sat up and stretched. “I don’t suppose we could trade in the tent for a model with a bathtub.” 

“Actually, we could,” began Severus, ignoring Harry’s amused expression. “But today is warm enough for a dip in the creek.”

“Oh.” Harry looked worried. Naturally. His near-death in the river was fresh in his mind.

“The creek is neither fast nor overly deep– it isn’t dangerous. But there is deep enough water for bathing a short walk downstream from here.” He shrugged. “But wizards do have certain charms – hygiene charms…”

“Hygiene charms?”

“They’re not particularly pleasant but they are effective,” said Severus. “There are even hospital charms for emptying bowels and bladders, or draining abscesses.”

Harry looked slightly green. “No thank you. I suppose the water won’t kill me.”

Nor did it. Harry stripped off quickly, keeping his back to Severus as he always did when he dressed or undressed in the tent or at the campsite. He waded into the water, stopping when he was waist deep. Severus had dug in the pack for the soap, and tossed it out to Harry as he sat on a log on the bank to remove his boots. He stripped methodically and spread his clothes out to warm in the sun.

He wasn’t modest by any stretch of the word, and was well aware of his physical imperfections. But he was also acutely aware of Harry watching him, even as he soaped his arms, and for just a moment, wished he offered more to look at than he did.

He was thin and wiry. His arms and face and neck were tanned by the early summer sun, but the rest of his body was startlingly pale. His thighs were strong and muscled, but his arse—what little there was of it—was scrawny. He wasn’t the kind of man a woman would glance at twice.

But Harry wasn’t a woman.

The water was cold. He wondered how Harry, unused as he was to the outdoors, had been able to acclimate to it so quickly. He waded out as far as Harry, standing to his side but not facing him. He caught the soap Harry tossed to him and made quick work of washing. Then, with Harry dipping to float, chest-high, in the frigid water, he made his way back to the bank. He sat on the grass in a patch of sun beside his clothing and stretched out his legs. When Harry waded out of the water five minutes later, Severus was examining his feet.

He would have preferred to keep his eyes on Harry, as he had been while Harry finished bathing, back toward him. There seemed to be no end to the pale skin and dark hair, the cleft of arse just visible as the clear water flowed around him. Now that Harry was not his patient, Severus’ mind was not trapped in clinical examination of injuries and assessment of functionality. Now, he could look from an aesthetic perspective.

He knew Harry had no idea how desirable he was.

“We have been so caught up in wand lore these past weeks that I’ve neglected the practical lessons of life on the prairie,” he said, not looking up as Harry, still wet, pulled on his trousers. He spread his toes and checked between them. “Foot care, Mr. Potter. Care of the feet is critical to both comfort and health. As are well-fitting boots.” He looked up again. Harry was standing between Severus and the stream, staring at Severus’ feet, lips parted slightly. Severus wondered at the almost ardent expression on his face.

Harry swallowed. “My boots are fine.”

“No, your boots are not fine.” Severus, still naked, crossed one leg and rested the foot on his knee. He held his foot, turning it so he could examine the bottom.

“They’re snug. They’re supposed to be that way. The man at the mercantile said they would stretch.”

“The man in the mercantile sold you boots that are too small as he likely did not have your size,” said Severus, now examining his other foot. He looked up at Harry. Harry was still staring at his feet. “Come, Mr. Potter. Sit. It is likely already too late but we may be able to prevent the damage from going any further.”

They stared at each other. Harry didn’t move.

“Now, Mr. Potter. I am not joking when I say that I am serious about feet. Sit.”

Harry sat in front on him cautiously. Severus reached out and took one of his feet and pulled it up into his bare thigh. He sat staring at the foot for a long moment. The blisters were obvious, but it was the stiffness of Harry’s leg that he noticed most, his obvious discomfort at finding his foot so close to Severus’ groin. The man’s leg was nearly trembling. Severus studied the toes, and when he stretched them apart to look between them for sores, Harry nearly jerked his foot out of Severus’ lap.

“Even your blisters have blisters, Mr. Potter.” Severus looked up. Harry was leaning back and away from him with palms flat on the ground. He held out his hand and Harry reluctantly extended his other foot. With both Harry’s feet in his lap, Severus pressed against the arches with his thumbs, rubbing them in circles as Harry tensed. He scooted toward Harry and Harry’s toes settled against his stomach, just over the dark nest of pubic hair. Harry tensed again. 

“Relax, Mr. Potter. I need to assess the extent of the damage you have done to yourself by wearing boots that are obviously too tight.” He continued with the examination and the massage, speaking softly. “Most people – men and women alike – enjoy having their feet examined. A bit of preventative care goes a long way on the prairie.” He looked up, frowning at the expression on Harry’s face. “This makes you uncomfortable. I am sorry – ”

“No, it’s fine. I’m just…not used to it. That’s all.” 

“Used to it? To having your feet examined?” Severus ran his hands over the tops of Harry’s feet then bent the toes forward and back, stretching the joints.

“To being touched – having my feet touched, I mean,” explained Harry.

“You need new boots,” Severus said, taking pity on the young man. He released Harry’s feet, albeit reluctantly, and stood. While Harry watched, he pulled on his trousers and shirt, leaving his suspenders undone. He walked over to Harry’s pile of clothing and picked up his boots, examining them closely.

Harry looked down. “New boots cost money,” he said. “I don’t have enough for boots.”

Severus shrugged. “Then I suggest you earn your keep by helping out with my enterprise.” He stuck his wand into one of the boots and muttered something, then repeated it with the other. “For the small bit of money I require, I sell medicinal remedies at the settlements and forts. This requires a great deal of ingredient collection and preparation. While you remain with me, you can assist with both.” He dropped the boots at Harry’s feet. “I have enlarged then a bit. They should do until you can purchase a better pair.”

“Thank you,” said Harry. He sat, dusted off his feet, and finished dressing, pulling his boots on last. He wiggled his toes.

“You stretched them with magic?” he asked as he adjusted his spectacles.

Severus nodded. “A temporary fix at best. They will eventually return to their original form. But in the short term, they will be more comfortable.”

Harry smiled. It was a thoughtful smile, reaching his eyes with a quiet light. “Thank you,” he said, speaking softly. 

“Come,” said Severus. He slid a boot onto a narrow, well-cared-for foot. “We have another day’s ride at least to reach the mustang herd where I last saw them.” He headed up the path to where Sal was grazing in the sun, trusting Harry to follow.

~*~

It was more difficult than Severus had described it. If he had said it would be next to impossible, he would still have made it sound too easy.

Sal was fast. He could handle his role. Carry Harry into the midst of the wild herd, chase their leader, get Harry close enough to grab the mane.

The problem wasn’t Sal, or his speed, or his ability to overtake even the fastest of the wild stallions. 

The first day, while Severus set up camp under a copse of cottonwoods, Harry set out on his first reconnaissance mission. Find the herd. Observe them. 

He came back at sunset, bright-eyed, excited.

“We tailed them all day. Sal got pretty close but they’re wary of him. I don’t think they like my smell, much, really.” He was standing by the horse now, uncinching the saddle. He dropped it to the ground and pulled off the blanket, then picked up the brush and began working it over Sal’s sweaty back. The horse nickered in approval. Harry kept brushing as he turned to Severus.

“Should I try to mask my smell somehow? Is there a spell for that?”

“They have excellent sight. They will remember you tomorrow, by sight, smell and sound.” He stirred the stew that was simmering on the fire. “How do your feet feel?”

Harry looked down at his feet as if surprised. “Fine. Good.” He grinned at Severus. “Thanks – I didn’t even notice them today.”

He was almost as bright the second day in.

“We got closer today. They let Sal graze within sight but whenever we moved closer in, they moved further away. I have my eye on a stallion – he’s coal black, even darker than Sal.”

“Why that one?” asked Severus. He found Harry’s enthusiasm infectious. Accustomed as he was to long, slow days in his own company, he should not notice Harry’s absence so keenly during the day. Should definitely not be looking up and to the west as the sun dipped down in the sky.

Harry shrugged. “Just a feeling. He’s kind of a loner – keeps himself apart from the others. He’s wary, too. Like he’s on guard duty all the time. And he’s lovely – all dark and strong and….” He trailed off. Severus saw the blush on his face before he turned it toward the horse and concentrated more on the task of brushing him down. Severus watched him work the brush over Sal’s hindquarters. He stepped closer instinctively, then stopped himself and exhaled.

“He will not be easy to overtake,” he warned. “Another horse might be more attainable. You’ll have your wand sooner, then. Tomorrow, even.”

Harry shook his head, back still turned to Severus. “I think it needs to be him, though,” he said. He gave Sal several more long strokes with the brush, then risked turning his head toward Severus, still leaning against the horse. “Do you mind? Are you in a hurry to get on your way?”

“I’m in no hurry,” answered Severus. “If that is the horse, then that is the horse.”

Harry patted Sal’s neck and nodded.

The third day was much like the second, the fourth like the third, the fifth like the fourth.

Harry came in at the end of each day, always reporting that he had gotten closer to the stallion, but that it wasn’t yet time. Sal could now graze comfortably at the edge of the herd. Harry related spending long hours staring at the sky, watching clouds form intriguing shapes, watching birds in flight. He was proficient now at identifying them by their silhouettes – knowing hawks from eagles from vultures and water birds. He ate cold roasted potatoes, or jerky, or tack, and he was beginning to lose the soft look of the city in favor of the leanness of this ample but wild land. He looked older, and more and more moved like he belonged to the land.

Patience, Severus told Harry every evening. There is no hurry.

There were no clocks here save the sun in the sky. No calendars save the seasons. 

There was no one waiting for Severus on the other end. No one waiting for Harry.

On the eighth evening, Harry nearly fell from the horse, stumbling on weak knees as he slid from the saddle.

Severus had been at the creek, washing up from the day’s brewing. 

“Mr. Snape!”

Severus increased his pace, hurrying into the camp to find Harry with torn trousers and a bloody knee, face streaked where sweat had run through the layer of dust on it. He took a wobbly step toward Severus and held up a clenched fist. 

“I got it!”

Severus’ wand was out in a trice, transfiguring a log seat into a more than adequate wooden porch chair. 

“Sit.”

Harry collapsed into the chair, hand still clutched in a fist. Severus pulled a clean white handkerchief from his pocket and held it out in front of him. Harry looked from the handkerchief up to Severus and back to the handkerchief. He opened his hand and dropped a clump of long, coarse hair onto the linen.

Severus folded the cloth onto itself several times and tucked it into his pocket.

“Well, you managed to not kill yourself, at least,” he said. But he was unable to completely hide the emotion in his voice – excitement, pride, a bit of relief. He knelt down in front of Harry and began to remove his boots.

“This chair is perfect,” said Harry. His voice had a note of incredulity to it. “If you could do that the whole time, why have we been sitting on logs for the past three weeks?”

“Because, Mr. Potter,” answered Severus as he pulled off a very dirty sock, “chairs like this are not native to our area. Nor would most wanderers such as ourselves have the tools to construct them. We certainly would not be carrying them around with us on the back of a horse.”

“Special treat then?” asked Harry, closing his eyes and sighing as Severus ran his hands up his leg, pushing his trouser leg up so he could better examine the injured knee.

“Something like that,” answered Severus tightly. Harry flinched as he folded the fabric up over his knee. He studied the bloodied flesh critically. “You have dirt and gravel in the wound. This will be painful. You may entertain me with tales of your adventures while I work.” He went to fetch water and a clean rag, then ducked inside the tent and came out with two potions vials.

He listened to Harry as he worked. It had simply been a matter of waiting. Of patience. Once Salazar, with Harry on his back, had gotten within striking distance, grazing peacefully, Harry had made the call and urged him toward the black mustang. The entire herd had joined in the run, with Harry doing nothing but hanging on to Salazar’s neck as the powerful horse caught up with the wild mustang and edged closer and closer as Harry extended his hand, reaching for the flying mane. He’d finally gotten his hand in, and pulled out a handful of hairs, but the game had changed then and the creature had turned to challenge them.

Harry had been tossed off Salazar as he reared up, whinnying. He’d banged up his knee in the fall, and had crawled away to safety as the two animals challenged each other.

“It ended in a draw – at least I think it did,” Harry said. “They backed off at the same time and went their separate ways. Sal came back to me and I crawled up in the saddle and we came straight back.” He winced as Severus poured a potion over the wound. “Do we have everything for the wand? Can we finish it tonight?”

Severus was frowning at Harry’s knee. “This is going to swell up. You need to stay off of it tonight.” He prodded the kneecap and flexed Harry’s leg, holding it at the calf and just above the knee. “And yes, we _will_ have everything we need after a short expedition in the morning and no, we cannot finish it tonight. You still need to select the hair you will use for the wand’s core.” He smiled slightly. “You were sent for one hair and brought back a hundred. We also must brew a potion—together, this time—it is not complex, but you will have to help gather a few ingredients for it.”

He wrapped Harry’s knee, but stayed seated on the ground, Harry’s feet in his lap. 

And since tomorrow Harry would have a wand, today they talked once more about magic.

What was it? _Where_ was it? What did a wand do? Did a wizard need a wand to do magic? What about animals like the wild stallion? Where was their magic? How did magical people find each other? Why was magic secret? Could you use magic to heal non-magical people? To cure their diseases? Could you make food? Transfigure a rock into bread or a leaf into meat? Could witches and wizards fly? 

Could wizards breathe under water or talk to animals or change shapes or become invisible?

And Harry was disappointed in himself. He should have _known_. He should have felt it. He should have known there was more for him than the miserable existence in the backroom of the dirty tavern. That life would not – could not – leave him with nothing: no parents, no siblings, no money, no hope. If only he had known about magic earlier, if only he had felt it inside like he felt its vague stirrings now.

If only. 

And Severus did not want to point out that, for most in Harry’s shoes, there really was no hope. That even magic would not save most of the downtrodden of the world.

They sat outside that evening, Harry with his leg propped up on a foot-rest Severus transfigured to match the chair, Severus sitting cross-legged on the ground, leaning against one of the log benches. 

“That one,” said Harry, pointing to a bright star. 

“Aldebaran,” answered Severus. “It’s the alpha star of the constellation Taurus. The eye of the bull.”

“I don’t see the bull,” said Harry, tilting his head.

Severus smiled. “It’s difficult to pick out. There’s a much easier one. There – the North Star. Polaris. And there – the Big Dipper. We call it the Plough in London. Its stars are part of the constellation Ursa Major”

“I see the Dipper,” said Harry, raising his arm and tracing the shape in the air. They were both silent for a few breaths. The breeze rustled the leaves of the cottonwoods. In the distance, a coyote howled and another answered.

“The stars are beautiful out here,” said Harry, voice so soft Severus had to lean forward to hear him. “I didn’t know there were places like this in the world.”

And Severus had an odd thought then, that he wouldn’t mind traveling the world with Harry. Showing him places whose beauty made this spot look positively ordinary. But as he looked up at the night sky again, alive with stars, brighter even than the brightest night atop the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts, he wasn’t sure he could find a time and a place to outshine this moment.

“You’ll teach me, won’t you?” asked Harry, voice a quiet plea in the still night.

“The stars?” Severus looked up at Harry. 

“The stars,” agreed Harry. “But not just the stars. All the important things. Magic. And the world. How it works.” He gazed skyward. “Where I fit in it.” 

“You’ve learned quite a lot already,” suggested Severus. 

“Not everything, though,” said Harry quietly. He shifted in his chair, wincing as the motion pulled at his injured knee. “Mr. Snape?”

“Severus,” he corrected, because the time was right to do so. “Please call me Severus.”

“Severus,” – the name came off his lips without hesitation, sounding for all the world as if they had been using each other’s given names forever, childhood friends, school mates, cousins. “Severus, I don’t think I can be married again.”

“No, you can’t. Not legally,” replied Severus slowly. 

“That’s not what I meant.” 

They gazed at each other, each searching the other’s eyes.

“I am not the marrying kind either, Mr. Potter.”

The other man smiled, warm and slow.

“Harry.”

~*~

Harry sat at the small table in the kitchen area of the tent, a white cloth before him, the hard-won mane hairs spread out on it. He selected the longest, thickest hairs, lifting each to the window Severus had spelled into the canvas wall. He had set aside all but the best half dozen.

He had been at this for two hours already, but Severus was in no hurry. It was another pleasant day in mid-June: sunny but not unbearably hot. A breeze blew from the east. He’d set out the largest cauldron he carried, usually magically packed up along with the other contents of the tent, and had filled it with water from the creek. He’d already boiled the water and made himself a strong cup of coffee. They’d had eggs again this morning, from a just-laid clutch Severus had found the day before.

“This one.”

Harry stood just outside the tent’s door. Severus squinted to see the dark hair in his hand.

“We have some gathering to do. Wrap the hair around the wand stem and place it safely inside.”

They walked together, gathering the ingredients to complete the binding potion – manure, of all things, from the wild mustangs. Bark and leaves and root and still-green fruit from the oldest wild plum tree they could find. Some earth from the base of the tree. They made a fortuitous find – a clump of hair in the bark of the tree where an animal had rubbed against it. It was mustang hair, not bison or deer. The color confirmed it and it was too high on the tree to belong to a fox or coyote or cougar. Severus had Harry remove it, prying off the piece of bark with hair still caught on it. It would be dropped in the potion as is, representing the two wand elements already joined.

“The potion is the catalyst, joining the core to the wood. We add the hair you have chosen and the wood you have formed last, together. Before those, we add elements representing the wand – from the species of tree that gave its wood and the animal that gave its hair.” He paused, forming his thoughts carefully. “The wand will be more _your_ wand, answering better to _you_ , if you offer some of your essence as well – for the potion.”

“What do you need?” asked Harry, seemingly not at all bothered by the suggestion.

“Anything – everything. Whatever you are willing to freely give. Hair, nail clippings, tears. Blood and semen – your seed – would be especially powerful. Especially when both are present in the potion.”

They walked together quietly for a hundred paces before Harry responded.

“All right. How much…blood…and seed…will you need?”

“Not much,” said Severus. “A few drops of blood. A single ejaculation.”

Harry blushed, but he smiled through the blush, and squared his shoulders, and kept walking.

~*~

Severus had set an empty potion vial on the table and had gone back outside to lay out and prepare the ingredients. He had the cauldron boiling again quickly, then sat down in the transfigured chair to wait, resting his hands on the wide arms and leaning back. The angle was perfect. It was an unexpected comfort, one to which he wasn’t accustomed. He sighed and closed his eyes.

“Severus?”

Had he fallen asleep? Obviously, some time had gone by because Harry was here, vial clutched in his hand, cheeks flushed.

Severus stood up and stretched.

“Good. Let us begin, then.”

They worked in silence, Severus only speaking to softly voice the incantation after each ingredient was added. Severus held them out in turn to Harry, who took each and dropped it gently into the boiling water. They added a fingernail clipping, several hairs Severus pulled from the messy crown of Harry’s head. Severus nicked Harry’s thumb with a knife, and held it over the potions vial with the seed and squeezed it until five fat drops had fallen in. Then Severus handed Harry the vial, and Harry poured it into the cauldron with shaking hands. A great roil of steam rose up, and Harry stepped back in alarm.

“Hold the wand ready,” instructed Severus softly as he waved his own wand again over the cauldron and spoke words in Latin he knew Harry did not understand. The color of the potion changed, now a rich, deep plum color. Severus nodded at Harry, his eyes conveying the order _Now_.

Harry picked up the wand with the hair wrapped around it. He held it horizontally over the potion and dropped it in.

Steam roiled up again, and smoke.

Severus pulled the cauldron off the fire, holding the handle with a rag-wrapped hand. He placed the cauldron on the earth between them.

“Your wand.”

Harry looked inside. The cauldron was empty save the wand, now a deep, rich brown, on the bottom. He looked at Severus, mouth dropping open.

Severus smiled.

“Take it.”

Harry reached in. His hand closed around the wood and he lifted it out. He tightened his fingers around it, then closed his eyes.

“It worked,” he breathed.

“Of course it worked,” said Severus. “You feel it, then?”

“I feel it,” said Harry. His voice trembled. “Your wand – when I held it – it worked for me. But Severus, it didn’t feel like _this_.”

“No, I imagine it didn’t,” said Severus with a vague smile. He stood and looked around the campsite. “Use it well, Harry. It is the most important tool, and weapon, that you will carry for the rest of your life. You should never use it around Muggles – people who do not have magic themselves. As a wizard with a wand, you are now bound to a statute of secrecy, as we have already discussed.”

“I remember. But Severus…?”

Severus met Harry’s eyes.

“I can’t imagine going back. Back to that world.”

“This is not an easy life, Harry,” Severus said carefully. “There are wizarding communities across this land, across the world, hidden in plain sight. You have countless opportunities. You can learn a trade – a magical trade, perhaps. Or an ordinary one. Wizards need shopkeepers and builders and farmers as well.”

“You said you would teach me. Last night.”

Severus nodded. “Come. We will pack up camp and move on. I can teach you all there is to know as we go.”

And when the tent and packs were loaded on Salazar’s back, when Harry climbed up behind Severus and wrapped his arms around his waist, Severus imagined he could feel a tingle of magic that hadn’t been there before.

*

The road was a magical classroom.

Harry learned to use spells to lift fallen trees off the trail, to summon tinder for the campfire. He learned to use his wand to start a flame, to cut all manner of things. There were spells to purify water, to stop the flow of blood from a wound, to clean soiled clothing. He could summon a piece of fruit from a high branch, and light the night with his wand tip when he stumbled out of the tent to relieve himself. He learned a shaving charm, and made short work of the inadequate and wispy beard he hated. He could dry his boots after crossing a creek, or put an impervious charm on his glasses to keep them from fogging up when it rained.

As they rode, Severus sometimes taught Harry magical history. He spoke of Merlin, of course, and of the four powerful witches and wizards who founded Hogwarts, in Scotland. He described magical creatures, both in the Old World and the New. He taught him the theory of transfiguration, and Harry made a button from an acorn, and a wooden bowl from an old turtle shell. As Harry’s shoulders broadened and his arms strengthened, he learned how to expand his clothing to accommodate his growth.

Practical lessons in practical magic.

At night, Severus showed him the stars and constellations, the planets that shone brightly in the night sky. And he learned how sailors navigated by the stars, though Severus preferred to use his wand as a compass, and taught Harry the Point Me spell.

They slept as they always did, in the tent on their bed pads, or around the fire on pleasant nights, bundled in bed rolls. The distance between them was always the same, an arms’ reach, a chasm. Severus fell asleep to Harry’s gentle breathing, a lullaby for an old soul. Harry always fell asleep within minutes of stretching out. Severus, who had slept alone for so many years, seemed to need Harry’s rhythmic breathing to rock him to sleep.

They came across travelers from time to time, sometimes a lone rider, Indian or white, sometimes a hunting party from a nearby settlement, or a group en route to a new life. They would sometimes share a meal, or a few words, or tales of the trail. 

It amused Harry that he was often mistaken for Severus’ son.

It did not amuse Severus.

They spent a month on the move, covering Kansas, dipping into Indian Territory, western Colorado, Nebraska. They visited towns and trading posts, selling Severus’ tonics and remedies, trading for new boots for Harry, for supplies, and finally, for a horse of Harry’s own. He named her Minnie, and Sal was happy both for the company and the lighter load.

In late July, unaccountably, they had a solid week of rain. Tired, dirty and sore, they made a supply run to a small Kansas town.

It was raining when they started their business and raining several hours later when they finished. Severus stood outside the mercantile, water dripping off his hat, and made a decision.

A hotel. There were two in town, close to the railroad, and he chose one, and bought a room for the night. The proprietor was tired and uninterested, and gave him the key without a second glance at Harry.

There was a rough wooden floor with a braided rug. A small desk and chest of drawers. An oil lamp. A wooden chair. A fireplace with wood stacked on the hearth. 

One bed in the room, wide enough for two.

The bed was both a blessing and an invitation. 

Harry toed off his boots and stood them side by side against the wall by the door. He shrugged out of his jacket and laid it across the chair, then hung his hat on a hook on the wall. 

Severus was a pace behind him. Boots, jacket, hat. 

Harry reached up to straighten his hat on its peg where Severus’ had set it askew.

Severus could stand this close to Harry on the prairie and tamp down the desire. He could meet his eyes across the fire and react with only a smile. He could brush against him as they passed in the tent and resist the urge to push him onto the floor and straddle him, holding his wrists to the floor.

But here, in this room, with the bed singing its siren song behind them, he was overpowered.

Severus caught Harry’s wrist.

With a wooden door closed behind them and strong walls surrounding them, with dim light striping the wooden floor through the shuttered windows, Severus pulled Harry toward him.

There was no time to think, no reason to, as Harry grabbed on to him with his free arm and pulled his head down.

Lips met lips and reason and restraint left the room.

Harry was clinging to him, and they were kissing through panting breaths, and Harry’s hands were in his hair, and he tasted sweet and young and male, and he didn’t know how to kiss but it didn’t matter. As with all things Severus had taught him, he was a quick learner. 

They fell onto the bed in a tangle of limbs and Harry was on him, kissing his face, grinding down against him so that Severus knew that this was what Harry wanted – that _he_ was what he wanted, even though rational thought was gone. He caught Harry’s head between his long-fingered hands. “Slow down, Harry.” He burrowed his head in the crook of Harry’s neck, kissed his ear, his neck, his jaw. Rolled to separate them, to get atop Harry. Awkward, fumbling undressing, kissing each exposed patch of skin, hands tight around each other, exploring, clutching. Naked, prick hard and already leaking, Severus held them together in his hand, conjured lube, squeezed and pulled, fastened his mouth on a dusky pink nipple on a smooth, nearly hairless chest, bit down as Harry erupted, spasming, sobbing into Severus shoulder, wrapping his legs around Severus’ waist, gripping him hard.

Severus stilled, still hard and wanting. He wanted to take Harry, to take his innocence, wanted it now more than he ever had before. He sat up with difficulty, resting on Harry’s thighs. His prick jutted forward and Harry’s eyes were on it.

“You need…you didn’t…” Harry fumbled for words. He looked sated, debauched. Severus wondered what he would look like after he was properly fucked. He didn’t want to wait to find out. 

“Do you want me to take you properly?” asked Severus. He slid his hands up Harry’s thighs, framing his prick and balls with his fingers. He looked his fill at the complacent prick, plump and pink, then smiled, bent again, and tongued a nipple. Harry arched his back, moaning beneath him.

“I don’t know…” Harry lowered his voice to a whisper. “What else…exactly…men do…together.”

“I am sure you can guess,” said Severus. “But I will teach you.”

Severus Snape would not always be Harry Potter’s teacher.

That evening he was, as they lay together in the wide and soft bed, rolled into the middle where the mattress dipped low. He had had his pleasure, and Harry his, though his lover was sore now, aching with the newness of the unfamiliar act. For Severus, it had been exquisite. He had taken his time with Harry, to prepare him, until he wanted it, _needed_ it. In the end, Harry was bucking back to meet him, coaxing him forward, no awkward virgin. He came a second time, just after Severus, and collapsed onto the mattress, boneless. When Severus turned him over, there were tears in Harry’s eyes. 

“I hurt you,” he whispered, brushing them away with his thumb. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” said Harry. “I just didn’t want it to end.”

When they woke at dawn, Severus spooned against Harry’s back, Harry turned in his arms and spoke quietly in his ear. 

“I thought of you that day, when we made my wand. You gave me the vial to collect my seed. And I sat there in that tent and…nothing. Until I thought of you outside making that potion. And your hands, how long the fingers are.” He closed his hand around Severus.’ “And how black and bright your eyes are. And that scar just on the side of your nose.” He traced it slowly with his index finger. “And I thought of you down at the creek that day, how comfortable you were sitting there naked. How you put my foot in your lap. How close it was…to you. And when I touched myself then, it was all you, you see. You touching me, wrapping your long fingers around me, pulling.” He smiled, idly traced the line of Severus’ jaw. “I didn’t think loving a man was right, Severus. I didn’t think it was possible. I thought I could never have what I wanted—what I _needed_....”

Severus silenced him with kisses, then pushed him back against the pillows and slid down between his legs. The prick was already half hard, and it swelled more for him, pressing into his throat as Harry bucked up in surprise, then buried his hands in Severus’ hair. And he closed his eyes and let Severus pleasure him—Uncle Vernon and his young widowed wife and the tavern in Ohio a forgotten past in a magical now.

~*~

Severus had a quarter section in northern Kansas and they wintered there, in a snug cabin that no one would find beside a creek where the deer came to drink. But spring and summer and fall were spent on the road, in the tent, with two chairs in the little kitchen and two horses grazing outside.

Harry became adept at collecting for Severus’ brewing – salamander eggs, swallow’s nests, the mulchy earth where mushrooms were just beginning to emerge. He could find the feathers of nearly any bird, and pick through a pile of bones to find coyote teeth or the horny hoof of a bison. 

Severus bought him a harmonica in Dodge City, and Harry played by the fire at night, sometimes on the oft-appearing porch chair, sometimes resting against Severus, cradled between his knees. He worked wood, too, carving soft pine into intricate animals, steam locomotives, whistles and flutes to sell in towns and trading posts. 

His magic melded with their surroundings, and he used it wisely, purposefully, under Severus’ direction, until Severus deemed he could teach him no more save the names of the stars. Sirius appeared early that first winter, and Severus told him how the Egyptians used its appearance to foretell the annual flooding of the Nile. 

What they found most difficult in those early days was to establish clear distinctions of self. They spent their days together, and their nights. Severus was content to continue as he always had – collecting, preparing, brewing. Reading the journals and the papers and the books he purchased on their forays to the Wizarding enclaves, writing to his mentor and to his mother, traveling to the Indian Country, studying the magic of this land.

Harry would have melded himself to Severus’ life had not Severus intervened and insisted that, even in the close confines of their entwined lives, he find his own pursuits, search for his own happiness. 

He had bought the harmonica on their next trip to Dodge.

But far from settling for melancholy tunes to play as the stars rose, Harry taught himself to carve, and purchased drawing paper and pencils and captured the flora and fauna of their locale, drawing details of wings and eyes and patterns of skin. He set himself on a self-appointed quest of knowledge and excelled in the solitude of this land, knowing he was never really alone.

Albus came to visit two years after Severus rescued Harry. He stepped out of the Floo in the Wizarding inn they had chosen, bedecked in emerald green robes, and embraced Harry. Later, he had spent hours poring over Harry’s drawings, and asking questions, and after he returned to England, wrote to offer to find a publisher for Harry’s works.

Life was not always peaceful for them, nor was lovemaking.

When Harry fell asleep watching a fox with her kits and tumbled into camp hours late, Severus took him hard, barely able to push him into the tent before he was on him in a claiming fury of relief. And when they visited a saloon in Hays, and a certain gentleman seemed to know Severus a little too well and called him by name, Harry was silent on the ride back to camp, and sulked into the tent by himself. Severus followed him in a few moments later, and they had a heated row, then just as heated sex with Harry on his knees, cheek pressed against the floor, Severus biting his shoulder as he came..

In early May, five years after Severus pulled Harry out of the river, he waited for Harry at the edge of a small town in Nebraska, holding both horses and watching two boys throwing a ball back and forth. Harry had delivered an order of toys to one store while Severus visited another with his remedies. They had arranged to meet here and head back to camp together.

Harry was late by half an hour. He took his reins from Severus and mounted Minnie, and they set off on the path toward the river.

Harry didn’t speak until they were well on their way.

“I saw Ginny in town,” he said as they headed down the road toward the river where they had set up camp earlier in the day. “In the mercantile. She didn’t recognize me.”

Severus looked over at him. When he answered, it was with a calm he did not feel. “You are certain?”

Harry nodded. “I’m sure. She was pregnant. And she had a child with her.”

Severus looked at him, curious. “A child?”

Harry smiled softly. “A little girl. No more than two years old.” 

“Two years old.” He couldn’t even imagine a child of two in his mind. 

Harry smiled. “Shy little thing. Hid her face in her mother’s dress when she caught me staring at her.”

They rode on for some time, Harry lost in thought, Severus allowing him the silence. Severus glanced at Harry. It was not hard to believe that his wife had not recognized him. His hair was longer, more brown than black now from the sun’s bleaching. He was tanned, healthier by far, and with a life spent largely outdoors, only wore his spectacles for drawing and reading. He wondered, watching Harry, if Harry was considering the idea of a different life, the life he might have had with Ginny Weasley. If he was imagining himself walking beside Ginny, a passel of children lined up behind them in their Sunday best, heading into town for church services.

“Ginny looked good. Healthy, happy. She’s clearly moved on.” Harry’s voice, which had had no hint of Severus’ imagined reflection, took on a quiet note. “Good for her,” he said, nodding his head. “Good for Ginny.”

“She is fortunate to have found someone else,” said Severus.

Harry looked over at Severus for a long moment. The two regarded each other with a calm acceptance wrought of their quiet companionship. A slow, affectionate smile spread across Harry’s face. “So am I,” he said. He reached out and brushed his fingers against Severus’. “I have everything I want – everything.”

Sal took the lead and crossed another small creek.

"And don’t you forget that,” Harry added quietly.

And they rode on in silence, dark silhouettes against the setting sun.

-The End-


End file.
